Songwriting Retreat

 Wike Songwriting Retreat

From 19th - 21st February 2016, Heads Together took a group of 11 young people from their Chapel FM project, away to Wike Scout Camp for a weekend of writing songs, playing ukuleles and lighting fires. We wanted to see how far we could develop the young people's musical skills if they had a whole weekend doing nothing else.

Music In East Leeds

We do a lot of music work with young people from East Leeds at Chapel FM.  We run our weekly Next Generation Music group as well as mentoring several bands each year through our ‘Associate Bands’ programme.  Recently, we have also started to offer guitar, keyboard and vocal lessons. As well as the sessions we offer at the Chapel, we have close links with the local schools and have run music based projects with a few of them.  

Over the past couple of months we have started up a regular round the table discussion with the local school teachers to discuss provision of music in East Leeds and were shocked to find that the majority of local schools have no peripatetic music tuition for students.  This means that many young people in East Leeds have no access to music lessons unless they can afford to pay weekly for private lessons.  We are starting to realise that many of the young people we work with would have very little access to extra curricular music if it wasn’t for being involved in our courses. We also find that many of them are not good at accessing any opportunities which are available to them as they aren’t used to doing so.

All our musical activities are aimed at getting young people to have fun engaging with creative processes and raise their aspirations.  A couple of years ago we held a songwriting weekend and it was some members of our older group who’d been on the previous course that suggested that we run it again. Our young people have a lot of distractions in their everyday lives and are often warn out after a day’s school work before they attend our sessions. Taking them even 15mins down the road to a place without computers where they had their phones away for the majority of the time to focus on being creative for a whole weekend is something most of our young people have never experienced.  

The Group

The group we took away for the weekend was made up of young people from our ‘Next Generation’ foundation and music groups.  These groups meet weekly to develop their broadcasting and music skills through workshops and extended projects which we enter for Arts Award accreditation at the end of the year.

This year, the foundation group who are our newest and youngest members (11-14 years old) were very quick at signing up for the course and took up a lot of the places which meant that we had a lot of young people there who were unable to play a musical instrument.  We also had a couple of our graduate students (18-19 years old) who have been with us for several years and are accomplished singer songwriters.

“I enjoyed it a lot, at first I didn’t want to go because I thought it wouldn’t be that enjoyable but eventually I persuaded myself and my mum persuaded me to go and I had the best time ever”  Tom - Foundation Group

Outline of the weekend

Friday

When we found out that most of the group didn’t play an instrument, we decided to spend the Friday evening as a group doing vocal improvisations and learning the ukulele. Each member of the group was given their own lyric book on the so that they could begin storing their ideas privately.  We decided that due to the differing skills and personalities of the group, it was important to give them plenty of time to explore their own songwriting.  We wanted them to play to their strengths and not be led by us, so tried to avoid too many whole group sessions in favour of them working individually or in small groups on their own ideas. 

Saturday

After much excitement at making their own breakfasts, we had a walk around  the grounds where we discussed lyric writing, using the surroundings as a stimulus. We had planned a range of games and activities to enhance literacy skills and vocabulary over the weekend, but it quickly became clear that everyone in the group was able to create lyrics, so we focused more on enabling them to turn these into songs through work on rhythm and song structure.

For the rest of Saturday, we split up around the hall and bunk houses on site to write songs.  The two members of staff and an older student who was volunteering with us spent time with each of the groups, giving them support in developing their ideas.  Many of them just needed someone more competent on a musical instrument to help them play their ideas through whilst they concentrated on the melodies and rhythms.  By mid afternoon, we had worked with everyone to develop parts or the whole of a song and gave everyone a chance to practice individually while we  lit the campfire.  Gradually, everyone filtered outside and we ate food and sang songs around the campfire.  Everyone in the group performed something and we chose some to work on as a whole group in the evening.

On Saturday evening, we had a vote for the best song and gave some prizes for best collaboration and best lyric.  Everyone was tired by this point so we sang some well known songs and had a break from creating.

Sunday

As we had worked on four songs on the Saturday night, we decided to perform these for the parents that came to collect their children.  All the parents stayed to watch these and it was a  positive experience for the group and the parents.

Case Studies

Case Study 1 - Molly

One member of the group who was struggling with vocalising her ideas was able to explain roughly what she wanted her tune line to do and then pick from a few different examples which were sung to her how she wanted her song to go. She then helped record the different sections of the vocal onto her mobile phone. We then used these recordings to work out the chord structure on a guitar with her picking how she wanted it to be played from a range of styles.

Case Study 2 – Danny 

One of the most successful songs was written on the ukulele by a member of the group who’d never played before that weekend.  He initially kept the chord structure very simple, concentrating on the Am and F chords which are easy to pick up quickly.  He was able to put together a verse, bridge and chorus over these chords which had distinct enough tune lines and rhythms to work as three separate sections.  He was struggling to get the rhythms of his second verse to work over the top of the chords because the rhythms were quite difficult.  With somebody to play guitar whilst he concentrated on the lyrics and  a little help in re-writing a few sections, he was able to work out his second chorus.  We also looked at some variations of the chords which could keep the same tune line but broke up the sections more obviously.

“If we went again I’d say make it a little bit longer…because when I left, I felt upset because I really enjoyed it.” - Molly, Foundation group

Evaluation

We had a discussion with a group of the young people who attended and asked them what they thought about the experience.  We broke the discussion down into three questions

What were your favourite bits of the weekend? 

“It was nice getting to know the people and getting to know how to write a song properly”

“When we all sat around the campfire and were singing our own songs it was just really nice all being together.”

“I enjoyed helping the other people with musical instruments.”

What bits didn’t you enjoy?

“I found the first night the worst as I was in a strange environment”

“I couldn’t sleep on my bed because normally I’m used to lots of teddies surrounding me and I only had one teddy”

“The spiders! but luckily we had Emily to get rid of them.”

“I was hard to get to sleep when everyone was so excited”

What did you feel you gained from the experience?

“I managed to write a full song”

“I learnt about breathing properly when I’m singing”

“I met some new friends”

“I learnt how to start writing lyrics by getting inspiration from where you are”

If we did it again, what would you change?

“Bring different instruments. Instead of ukuleles, actual guitars and if it’s possible, a drum kit.”

“In an extra day I’d like to perform songs around the campfire and listen to some different songs.”

“Actually go somewhere where we can get out of the campsite instead of being trapped in the campsite.”

What did we achieve?

• Everyone wrote lyrics and sections of songs
• Everyone contributed to the performance in some way
• There was an informal and supportive environment all weekend
• The tasks were all differentiated so that everyone achieved something useful to them
• The performance to parents at the end of the weekend and at an open mic the next week were a great success (even reducing some of the parents to tears)

Most importantly, the group were really inspired by the  experience and many of them have been writing other songs at home since the retreat.

Conclusions

After our discussion with the group and a bit of self reflection we came up with a few key points that we thought were key if we ran the project again in the future

• First and foremost, we’d get group to help organise it with us so they could have more input in shaping the course.
• Make sure that the group had an additional performance of their songs afterwards.  This time, the group’s performance at the open mic was a great focal point.
• Extend the Sunday so that they had time to come back to their songs and work towards their performance for parents.
• Set up more instruments for them to experiment with.
• Look at some other venues where they might have more activities we could run on drawing inspiration from your surroundings
• Give them some more input on structuring songs
• Think about how we work more effectively with people who aren’t confident in sharing
• It would be nice to have more support staff for lighting fires and helping at meal times so we had more time to do individual work with the members who couldn’t play instruments.
• We really enjoyed working with this group who were just starting out with  songwriting but we think it could work well for a more advanced group. It would be nice to run those two separately.

Next Steps

• Off the back of the retreat we have had lots of our young people writing songs and bringing them into the chapel. We’d very much like to support them further in this and have an idea that we might set up a monthly songwriting circle for the group to come and share ideas and get help with their compositions 
• Several members of the group who had not played instruments previously have signed up to our instrument and vocal lessons at the Chapel which is a really positive step for them
• We are putting together a music development day to discuss music provision in East Leeds with music teachers and musicians.  We’ll be looking at opportunities for young people in East Leeds to access music and thinking about how we can work together to fill the gaps.
• The songwriting group are very keen to run another similar course so I’m sure we’ll be looking into that (during the summer this time!!).